My Mangy New Friend

I’ll call her the lunch lady, but she was actually a nun with a shaved head (apparently all nuns in Thailand have shaved heads?). It was 11am, the last meal of the day, and I had already gotten my food and was eating in silence in the dining hall. The lunch lady picked up 2 pastries, scanned the almost full dining hall, walked to a person 3 tables away and gave one to them, then walked over to my table and gave the other to me.

Sometimes they hide strange things inside of pastries in Thailand, so I decided to break it open to see if there was anything inside. There was. A mini hot dog.

Blech.

Puppies that like treats
But then I remembered all the puppies that lived by the kuti I was staying in. They would love this thing! So I stuck it in my pocket and took it with me when I left the dining hall.
The puppies were all there when I got back to the kuti. As was a pretty mangy, flea bitten, scratchy old dog. And then I reconsidered. I bet the puppies get all the love around here, I thought. And so I broke off half the hot dog pastry and gave it to the mangy dog. I walked back to my kuti and he followed me, and I decided to give him the other half as well. The mangy pooch
He hung out on my porch and slept there at night for the remainder of my time there.
It was then that I started to wonder about the lunch lady nun and her intentions. Maybe she looked around that crowded dining hall, thought about giving a treat to a puppy, then decided to give it to the mangy one instead.
I guess I’ll never know!